The Future War

'C'mon with me, I want to show y'all something.' With a gesture he included Mary.

'Have you ever heard of Sarah Connor?'

Dennis blinked. 'Yeah, she made an announcement before the bombs fell, telling people what was going on.'

'So you believed her?' Brock said. He'd led them into another room of the cabin.

Reese rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'I guess I did. Maybe not everything she said.'

'Not at the time anyway,' Brock said with a grin. 'She's a very smart lady. I won't bother you with how, but she knew this was coming. So she recruited us, she financed us, and she taught us everything she could to help us survive. Let's be honest, folks; if you don't believe her now then you're in denial.'

He pressed a series of knotholes in the paneling and a section of flooring swung up silently. Mary looked down into the hole where a wooden ladder disappeared in the darkness.

'What's down there?' she asked. 'The Batcave?'

Brock laughed at that. 'The Batcave. I like it. Go on down; the lights will come on automatically when you get to the bottom.'

Mary just looked at him suspiciously, so Dennis went first. As promised, when his foot touched the dirt floor, a light went on. It was dim, but serviceable. Down a short corridor was a metal door; on the doorpost beside it was a keypad. Mary came down next, followed by Brock.

He led them along the short corridor and, blocking the keypad with his body, keyed in a code. The lock gave and he opened the door. They found themselves in a small, well-lit room containing a computer, a desk and chair, a file cabinet, and a young man of perhaps seventeen.

'My son, Ray,' Brock said. He nodded at the boy and the door behind the desk clicked open. Brock led them through.

This time the room was long, narrow, and low ceilinged. The walls seemed to be plastic, as did the ceiling, the whole braced with metal. There were computers and what looked like communications equipment everywhere. About twenty people looked up at their entrance, men and women both, with men in the majority. Nobody seemed to be over forty; that may have been because everyone looked very fit.

'As you were,' Brock said, and the small crowd went back to work. He turned to Mary and Reese. 'What you've stumbled into is the resistance. Most people don't realize yet that we need one.

But after what you've seen, after the way you were handed over to that HK, you have to know that your place is with us, fighting against Skynet.'

MONTANA

The landscape rolled around her, huge beyond imagining.

Sarah Connor felt like a bug on a plate as she roared south along 1-3; sometimes it seemed like the gray- green immensity of grass around her was moving while she stayed motionless. She was glad to be away from the towns—away from the stink of death, too, except for the odd victim of the first wave of the machine uprising, and the coyotes had cleared most of that away. Mostly the air was clean, dry, a little chilly for this time of year, but otherwise normal.

But things aren't normal at all, she thought grimly.

Cattle in a nearby field looked up and started to lumber away as she passed; she felt an obscure sadness at realizing that they'd become wary of humans and human sounds so quickly.

Sarah had decided to use main routes as much as possible since the quality of the roads made up in speed what they lacked in safety; she'd come south along the country roads that flanked the Judith River, and then back onto 1-3 near Hobson. Detouring around population centers and the little oblongs marked on her map as fallout footprints kept her out of radiation danger; at least, the counter said she hadn't picked up enough to worry about— enough by post—Judgment Day standards. The number of roentgens would have put any safety officer before that into screaming fits, and made a lawyer slaver.

There was little traffic, and what there was usually was official—which meant Skynet and its allies and/or dupes. So far she'd had no problem avoiding them; it helped that she was avoiding towns when she could.

Still worse here in the lower forty-eight than it was in Canada, she thought, pausing by the side of the road to take a drink from her canteen; the water had a nasty mineral aftertaste from the pills she'd had to add to it. Ears, stunned by days of the Harley's motor, almost ached with the quietness at first; after a minute or two she could hear the wind singing in the roadside wire.

She'd run across tons of abandoned cars and trucks and far too many unburied bodies. Canada had been in better shape, but only marginally, and it, too, was under martial law. Another reason to avoid towns.

She and John had organized resistance centers here, but Sarah didn't seek them out. Her task now was to get to Central and South America as quickly as possible and start up the food deliveries. This was no time for a grand tour.

But she was mightily tempted. She felt out of touch, and it was irksome, like losing one of your senses—one you didn't know you were counting on until it went missing. What was John doing? Where was Dieter? How was the resistance holding up?

And most important of all, what was Skynet doing?

Maybe I can pick up some information at the next town, she thought.

She was running low on alcohol and would have to stop soon to fuel up; during daylight, in this rural area, that shouldn't cause problems. She had four IDs, all extremely good. She also had beef jerky and small parcels of spices to trade for what she needed, and she expected to get a good rate of exchange. By now people were probably hungry for a taste of beef. She knew they were hungry for what was in her little packets.

Sarah pulled to a stop to check her map. With the engine quietly muttering, she suddenly heard another motorcycle revving, loudly, to the south.

No, more than one. In fact, there were quite a lot of them, if she wasn't mistaken. Just over that rise, and coming this way.

She decided to go back to the last exit and go around whatever was happening ahead of her.

It was unlikely to be a bunch of lawyers and CPAs out for a picnic with their families. John had asked her once about recruiting motorcycle gangs on the grounds that they were tough, somewhat organized, and seemed to be natural survivors, but she'd discouraged him.

'We're trying to save the world,' she'd said. 'They're trying to eat it.'

As Sarah meandered back down the road, she wondered how big the rally was. And what does the army think of it? Would it bring the authorities running to break it up, or would they stay away, with the not unreasonable excuse that their plates were already full to overflowing? Skynet wouldn't care—in fact, it would feel a sort of cold mechanical glee at humans doing its work for it, unprompted.

And how were the bikers managing to gather without wholesale intergang slaughter taking place? Though they might have worked that out weeks ago after the bombs fell. Whatever.

As John had said, they were natural survivors, but then, so were cockroaches and lice, and she didn't want closer contact with them, either.

Sarah was going down the exit ramp slowly as she thought about the rally up ahead. Should she try and get a look at it from a distance, or should she just ignore it and carry on with her mission?

WWSD? she wondered idly. What Would Skynet Do?

She managed to pull the bike into a turn just before she ran into a rope snapped up to neck height. Sarah continued the turn, meaning to run, but three bikes rolled onto the ramp behind her.

Their filthy riders grinned evilly and chuckled at her near escape.

Shit, she thought. I don't have time for this. She heard bikes moving in behind her. Your move, she thought at them.

They hadn't gone for their guns, so she didn't reach for the Bushmaster in its scabbard by her right leg. She had some grenades on a belt under her jacket; that might be a better technique, but the sound of the explosion might bring half that rally running.

She moved her bike so that she could see the ones behind her as well. The sides of the off ramp were too steep for them to make an effective circle, which was lucky, because it offered an out—not a good one, but still, beggars couldn't be choosers.

'Yer supposed to say, 'What do you want?' Don'cha know that?'